Apparatus and method for measurement and compensation of atmospheric turbulence effects in wavefront interferometry
AssigneeZetetic Institute
InventorHenry A. Hill
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of operating a wavefront interferometry system that generates an array of interference signals that contains information about relative wavefronts of measurement and reference beams, the method involving: from the array of interference signals, computing a first array of phase measurements for a first time and a second array of phase measurements for a second time; computing a difference of the first and second arrays of phase measurements to determine an array of rates of phase changes; and from the array of rates of phase changes, computing an array of atmospheric turbulence effect values which is a measure of atmospheric turbulence effects in the wavefront interferometry system.
Claims28
A wavefront interferometry system comprising:
- a wavefront interferometer that during operation combines a reference beam from a reference object and a return measurement beam from a measurement object to generate a combined beam;
- a detector system for receiving the combined beam and generating therefrom an array of interference signals;
- and
- a processor system programmed to process the array of interference signals and to compute therefrom a first array of phase measurements for a first time and a second array of phase measurements for a second time, to compute a difference of the first and second arrays of phase measurements to determine an array of rates of phase changes, and from the array of rates of phase changes to compute an array of atmospheric turbulence effect values which is a measure of atmospheric turbulence effects in the wavefront interferometer.
A method of operating a wavefront interferometry system, said method comprising:
- combining a reference beam from a reference object and a return measurement beam from a measurement object to generate a combined beam;
- receiving the combined beam and generating therefrom an array of interference signals;
- based on the array of interference signals, computing a first array of phase measurements for a first time and a second array of phase measurements for a second time;
- computing a difference of the first and second arrays of phase measurements to determine an array of rates of phase changes;
- and
- from the array of rates of phase changes, computing an array of atmospheric turbulence effect values which is a measure of atmospheric turbulence effects in the wavefront interferometry system.
A method of operating a wavefront interferometry system that generates an array of interference signals that contains information about relative wavefronts of measurement and reference beams, said method comprising:
- from the array of interference signals, computing a first array of phase measurements for a first time and a second array of phase measurements for a second time;
- computing a difference of the first and second arrays of phase measurements to determine an array of rates of phase changes;
- and
- from the array of rates of phase changes, computing an array of atmospheric turbulence effect values which is a measure of atmospheric turbulence effects in the wavefront interferometry system.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.